Deuce Geary & Co.

Joe Biden seemed to spend a lot of time in the debate talking about his past record. I have to think that, with his reputation for reckless accounts of the past, that he was just flat-out wrong.

The one I'm really hoping people will dig up contrary evidence on: his ridiculous assertion that not once since he was set straight by Mike Mansield in his (Biden's) first year in the senate has he questioned other people's motives. Is it really possible that in 35 tears, he hasn't done that?

UPDATE: I knew the blogosphere wouldn't let me down. Ace has 14 Biden lies provided by the McCain camp. Canadian conservatives were also keeping an eye on Biden. I'm still hoping someone will dig up a Biden quote disparaging Republican motives.

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I could probably write for hours on this, but I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

At the risk of sounding naive, I have a rather radical question: Could a depression or other significant economic downturn actually be good for America in the long run?

Bear with me a few minutes. Keep in mind, I'm not writing this from a "high and mighty" attitude. It's not like I've saved such substantial sums and invested them in gold so that I could ride out a decade-long depression. My finances aren't even in good shape right now, and in my younger days, I was downright frivolous. I'm asking this question from the perspective of someone who would be subject to financial devastation, but wondering if maybe it might be better for me and the country to take our lumps.

I also want to make it clear that I am not hoping for a depression. I wasn't born until nearly 20 years after the Great Depression ended; all I have to go on are the stories I hear about it from parents and grandparents. I can't even imagine how bad it must have been.

So, here goes.

A professional colleague of mine told me last week that he thinks the present financial crisis was brought on not by any political or financial factor, but a cultural one: the refusal of Americans to work toward the ability to buy something when easy credit lets them have it now. I generally concur, though that cultural attitude couldn't have caused as much harm in a more tightly controlled system, i.e. proper foresight by financiers and the government could have prevented this cultural trait from causing such a big problem. (And I found it odd for him to bring it up, since I know he is an Obama supporter, and if anyone has ever promised a free lunch, it's Obama.) In other words, it is a culture of "instant gratification" that got us here.

Mandatory lending requirements that forced banks to give loans to borrowers they would not have accepted without the law played a part, sure. But the law required only a certain portion of a bank's portfolio to be made up of such loans, if I understand it correctly.

I've seen no statistics, but I suspect that middle class refinancing played just as big a role, if not bigger. (If I'm right about that, then we will never see the statistics, because the last thing any politician wants to do is put any blame on the middle class.) The radio commercials the last few years for funky refinancing were ubiquitous. Aside from crazy terms with teaser rates and adjustments that could potentially double or triple the mortgage payment, the ads also encouraged homeowners to borrow against their houses for things like new cars, vacations, boats, and the like. I wonder how many people did so with loans that proved impossible to repay.

Now, think about the people you know who are the most careful with their money. I'm not talking "hide it in the mattress" careful (though those people are undoubtedly in this group, too), but people who spend carefully and save a lot. Who invest carefully. Maybe keep a lot of food in the house and almost never throw anything away.

The people like that in my life are relatives who lived through the Great Depression. Whether you're asking your grandfather why he doesn't replace his 1981 Oldsmobile (perfectly preserved, by the way) or asking why he and Grandma keep enough food in the house to feed a small army, the likely answer is: "I lived through the Great Depression. You can't understand."

I admit it, I can't. All I know is what I've observed. And what I've observed is that I've never run across someone who remembers the Great Depression who spends money readily on frivolities or luxuries, let alone who is a spendthrift or borrows in order to buy luxuries.

For those of us who haven't lived through genuinely difficult hard times, the lessons our betters tried to teach us may not take too readily. The Ant and the Grasshopper . . . little more than an entertaining fairy tale for many, with a lesson that fails to "stick" despite the good intentions of those who told it to us.

I think the general notion that a downturn would be good for the country in the long run underlies many of the "no" votes on the bailout bill in the House of Representatives today. Nobody there is rooting for a depression, either. But I think all of them recognize that at least a serious economic downturn is likely without a bailout — or that a downturn is inevitable, bailout or no, and it is better to have one without the bailout than with it — and that such a downturn would be a "teaching moment" for the populace as a whole. It's not an effort to get back at people who borrowed money they couldn't pay back, or who loaned money to enrich themselves at the expense of their companies; it's a matter teaching the next generation to avoid making the same mistakes. Even though it will also hurt some who have been prudent.

Assuming that a downturn could help in the long run, how long and how severe a downturn would it take to teach these lessons? The stagflation of the 70s slump wasn't enough. Nor was the 1981-1982 recession enough, apparently. Just how bad would it have to get before it would help in the long run?

Again, no high and mighty attitude here. And I hope to hell a depression doesn't happen, even if it would be good culturally for us. But I don't think it's beyond the pale to wonder if it would be beneficial in the long run.

You'll understand better why I posted the video at the bottom of this post if you read the post first.

Sarah Palin's credibility on foreign policy is going to take some time to gel, but the instantaneous criticism that she had no foreign policy experience was a little ridiculous. I mean, if everyone feels that strongly that a candidate has to have foreign policy experience, that pretty much limits your field doesn't it? You'd never have had an FDR or Reagan, and the left's criticism of Palin's foreign policy credentials also would have disqualified Bill Clinton. They were all governors. (Ace has a good post on the "foreign policy experience" of governors generally.)

Some conservatives are getting awfully nervous about Sarah Palin. Some of the criticism is reasonable, some is not.

I think Rich Lowry of The Corner has taken a reasonable approach. I think he was right in his assessment of Palin's performance regardng the "Bush Doctrine" question from Charlie Gibson: that "the truly pro-Palin position is to think she can, should, and will do better than this." I also agreed with him when, in a follow-up, he wrote:
Kathleen Parker calls on Palin to quit (but she bases her view of Palin's inadequacy on her supposed inability to handle the present financial crisis, rather than foreign policy). Kat-Mo at Ace of Spades HQ does a pretty good take down of Parker's piece. Read it all, but this should give you the gist:
Another conservative going overboard is Rod Dreher, who says he is "well and truly embarrassed for her" because of her explanation of why Alaska's proximity to Russia and Canada givers her some foreign policy credibility. (She certainly wasn't articulate, but her answer wasn't totally off the wall, either. She has the experience most governors have with foreign countries: trade missions.) At least Dreher doesn't agree with Sullivan that Palin should bow out.

Anyway, all of this reminded me of a movie scene involving foreign policy by a "regular guy" president. Bear with me on this before you view the video, because if you're unfamiliar with the story, the video might not make sense.

The scene is from the movie Harrison Bergeron, based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., which takes a look at the absurdity of radical egalitarianism: a government that doles out "handicaps" to those with more talent, intelligence, beauty, or other advantage, in order to level the playing field. The theory is that by preventing envy, society avoids revolutionary violence.

All of this is accomplished through a shadow government — totally unknown to the general populace — whose intellect is not handicapped. The shadow bureaucrats advise the actual government flunkies, and do all the actual technical work, but generally don't intervene to change policy. In this scene, Harrison, who has been recruited into the shadow government, walks in as one such bureaucrat is advising the president regarding a tense military standoff with Morocco.



I know it's satire, but it makes me wonder if maybe a little lack of sophistication won't be such a bad thing.

And the line about the president being a "steelworker from Scranton" is priceless in light of a certain other VP candidate's attempt to build his "heartland" credentials by emphasizing his early boyhood spent there.

That ought to get me a few google hits, eh? I can't believe it took four weeks for this to surface. According to the writer at that link, this is the guy that has apparently scooped the rest of the media.

That's what moderator Jim Lehrer asked Senators McCain and Obama around 6:40 p.m. Pacific time tonight. I was listening in the car and will have to confirm it by looking at a transcript when it becomes available. But for now, I gotta go with what I heard . . .

. . . blogger to comment on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol. I was going to write a post about how the left is wrong that this will sink Palin, and that they are wrong because their view of Christians is so warped. But Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has already put it so succinctly (emphasis mine): I've seen anecdotal evidence of how a church reacts to difficult situations like this. One of the unwed pregnancies at my old church, which was pretty darn conservative culturally and theologically, was the Pastor's daughter. Granted, she was no longer a teenager and she was living on her own, but she was still very young. Did we run the pastor out on a rail? No. We prayed for his family, especially his daughter, and rejoiced with him when the child was born.

This video mocking the messianic status Obama has been afforded is absolutely hilarious.

or so blogger to comment on McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. And a few nuggets from around the net:
He means this in a negative way, of course, as he continues: "Sarah Palin looks like an interesting woman, but let's hope she doesn't have to stare down Vladamir Putin any time soon."

Odd to be denigrating her for based on such small-town values so soon after the Obamaniacs ridiculed McCain for no knowing how many houses he and his wife owned. There's just no satisfying some people. The city's homepage is here, by the way.

The best roundups are at Ace. Start with this post, which explains how he is organizing the other posts. It's especially fun to read about the leftist attacks that have already started.